Orange and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) launched a joint laboratory to explore semantic communications, a technology designed to cut data traffic and energy use in future AI-driven networks.

The AI-Native Communications lab will run for five years and develop semantic communications technologies and applications, which prioritise whether the receiver understands the meaning or content of a transmitted message, even when the received data is not exactly identical to what was sent. This marks a shift away from conventional data transmission, where networks aim to reproduce bits perfectly and treat any alteration as an error.

The partners said the approach could reduce the volume of data exchanged across networks, lowering energy consumption and infrastructure requirements. The technology could also support communication between AI agents, which are expected to play a greater role in future network architectures.

The laboratory will also combine research from Orange and CEA to study network evolution, create shared semantic representations between AI models and contribute to future standards work.

Announced at the annual VivaTech event in Paris by Orange CEO Christel Heydemann and CEA general administrator Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, the pair said the initiative forms part of a broader push to strengthen French and European sovereignty over future intelligent network technologies.

Lyse Brillouet, EVP of research at Orange, said the joint laboratory reflects the operator’s commitment to building “the networks of the future: smarter, more sustainable, and natively designed for artificial intelligence”. She added the move was “a key step in reconciling the performance of our infrastructure with the need to reduce our future carbon footprint”.

Meanwhile, Etienvre stated semantic communications marked “a major breakthrough in how future networks will process information”, adding the collaboration aimed to strengthen Europe’s ability to “design and influence technological standards”.

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